Chapter 0004

Eva shook herself out of her reverie and got back to reality. She switched the live feed to show what was happening back at the station, and what she saw was a grand spectacle.

She quickly decided to analyze the situation and study the battle in greater detail.

It oughta be useful to watch how things play out, she thought. I'll probably be in these sorta situations plenty of times down the road. This really could be useful later.

The station was surrounded by a handful of cruisers, each accompanied by a few dozen fighters. It didn't look good from any angle.

The station looked almost exactly like the game counterpart: a huge rotating disc-like hospital-hab with a docking ring that circled its perimeter. Its gigantic Tetragrammaton Technologies logo was painted on each side of the disc, and made it look like a massive coin.

The only difference between this and the in-game version was that it had far less turret emplacements. This made things much harder for them to fend off the swarm of fighters that plagued it.

The station's security forces did their best to shoot down the pesky fighters, but they were simply outnumbered and outmaneuvered at every turn. The biggest problem they faced was that the tracking on the station's turret emplacements were too slow and couldn't keep up very well with them.

Surprisingly, they managed to shoot down the occasional fighter despite the disparity in speed. She watched as one of the turrets predicted where a fighter was going to be and fired a long burst prematurely.

The tactic worked, and the fighter was perforated as it crossed the stream of ballistic fire. There was no explosion - it simply crashed onto the station and bounced off at an angle. Then it spun uncontrollably into the depths of space as pieces of it flew off in every direction.

Sparks flew out of the many holes in its hull as it drifted off into the depths; its pilot reduced to little more than a red paste.

Eva noted that although the station was taking out the occasional fighter, it was clear that the effectiveness of its security team was pretty much abysmal. Their defense was flimsy not just because of how slow they were at tracking their targets, but which targets they even chose to fire at.

They chased after the fighters and completely ignored the cruisers, and that was a strategic blunder.

Any idiot could tell they were the ships in charge, and neutralizing them would have easily crippled their siege. However, they were too busy with swatting the flies that buzzed loudly around them instead. Eva was convinced that there wasn't a security chief on board, and if there was, he was highly incompetent. Hell, the whole fucking security team was incompetent.

She then focused her attention on the fighters.

They were grouped in wings, and didn't seem very powerful individually, but were highly maneuverable and zipped around at great speed. Although their teamwork and coordination seemed sloppy, they were still effective nonetheless.

As a whole they were somewhat undisciplined, and it was clear that only a few of them had ever had training in wing combat. The rest tried to follow them to the best of their abilities.

Eva noted that their strategy seemed to center around numbers and chaotic movement to keep their targets disoriented, and it worked. Or at least, it worked against this station in particular.

The fighters would attack as a group, and hit the same spot one after another, presumably to drill a hole through the armor via concentrated cannonfire. It probably sounded terrifying on the inside, to hear the constant rattling of various weapons fire on armor.

That's so wasteful, Eva thought. They might penetrate the armor eventually, if they don't run out of munitions first.

She then zoomed in on a few fighters to get a closer look at their loadouts, and was shocked at what she saw. The enemy ships didn't match any of the enemies from Bellum Aeterna!

She turned to Miko and asked if she recognized them, but she shook her head in response.

These were a motley hodgepodge of parts from different ships, like they were all built Frankenstein-style. Different guns, ship chassis, modules, armor… Some of them even looked like they were thrown together last-minute with whatever parts were left over.

Eva was astounded. She noticed that they all had something in common though - they each shared a highly efficient thruster setup. Their layout, size, and energy output were nearly identical to every other fighter out there.

It allowed them the ability to operate at high speed and with absurd maneuverability, consistently. This was typically only found in highly trained combat wings, where high mobility was valued far more than firepower.

Every battlefield tactician understood this as a fundamental necessity to winning engagements. Victories were more often won with velocity than firepower. While these pilots weren't spec ops by a long shot, it allowed these hodgepodge ships to maintain a similar advantage.

The more she studied the consistencies rather than the differences, the more she saw the subtle brilliance in their design.

It makes more sense now, she thought. They've got big, loud guns that don't do much more than attract attention, and are put together with random cheap parts. They're supposed to be chaotic, expendable distractions. It's sleight of hand. So that means the real threat is...

She then turned her sensors towards the cruisers, and zoomed in on them.

Unlike the fighters, they were clearly outfitted the same as each other. They even had similar red and black liveries, though they were somewhat different in pattern. Most critically, they all displayed the exact same logo on their hulls - a ripe golden apple.

Eva didn't recognize the logo, but kept a mental note to research them later. But she easily surmised that these were different factions united under a single banner.

Probably pirates, she thought.

The cruisers' hulls were rather sleek, and dotted with many maneuvering thrusters and weapon emplacements. They looked heavily armed and destructive, yet were lightly armored and relatively agile.

They were outfitted with multiple ship guns, scores of rocket pods, and a massive railcannon up top. Each railcannon spanned the length of the cruiser they were mounted on, and the slugs they fired were larger than the lifeboat Eva was currently piloting.

These cruisers were essentially flying glass cannons.

"Terra Nach Mar Gunboats," Eva blurted out loud. "Those things can take down entire fleets if left unchecked."

Terra Nach Mar was one of the corporations that designed and built many ships in Bellum Aeterna. Their designs revolved around fast strikes and overbearing firepower.

Some navies used their ships to swiftly break sieges, so it was interesting to Eva that these 'Golden Apples' were using them to cause a siege instead.

She also noticed that they weren't firing any of the smaller guns. They had a dozen powerful guns on each of them, and all of them combined would have more than enough firepower to turn the station into a wreck, eventually. Yet for some strange reason, they were only firing their railcannons.

As Eva was going through potential reasons, one of them fired its cannon at a defensive turret. The slug violently ripped it open easily, as though it was made of tin. In a single shot, it wrenched off a huge slab of armor, bent the gun barrels, and flung gunners into the cold vacuum of space.

Eva scanned her data readouts and noted that it had only used a 25% charge!

Had the cruiser used full power, its rail shot would have torn right through every deck on the station and punched through the other side. It would have caused a great amount of casualties on top of that. They were clearly pulling their punches, but for what reason?

As she scanned the station for damage, it became apparent that they had lost over a quarter of their defensive turrets, and the battle had only just begun. They were barely able to resist their attackers with a full complement of turrets, so every loss they had was devastating. It wouldn't take long until the station fell.

Glad I got out of there, Eva thought.

But something bugged her about the whole attack.

Things didn't quite add up, and she suspected there was something else going on. Galactic survival required constant upkeep. Everything had a price. In order to do what they were meant to do, all those attacking ships needed fuel, munitions, and maintenance.

No-one in their right mind would attack a station just for the hell of it. To put it another way, pirates attack to make profit, and yet Eva simply couldn't see the profit in an attack like this.

All they're doing is making a whole lot of noise, she thought. Once those guns are down, what are they going to do next? They don't have any boarding or dismantling ships. What're they really up to? Unless... this whole attack was a distraction.

An alert suddenly rang through the lifeboat: "Warning! Unidentified vessels inbound."

Eva instinctively set all her displays back to her optimum layout, and readied herself without hesitation.

With a blinding flash, a trio of cruisers ported in roughly a thousand kilometers away. They were accompanied by a couple dozen fighters each, who didn't hesitate to advance towards the cloud of lifeboats.

Eva was shocked at how close they came in - it was clearly an aggressive move!

As the lifeboats around them panicked at the sudden intrusion, Eva quickly scanned the new ships and reviewed their loadouts. She was immediately alarmed by what she saw.

They had the same hulls and logo as the cruisers attacking the station, however they had completely different loadouts.

The cruisers swiftly turned broadside, as though they were going to send a lethal cannonade, but instead their huge hangar bay doors opened. Large tractor beam turrets then aimed towards the lifeboats, powered up, and waited...

The fighters were also different - they weren't patchwork at all and matched the sleek hulls of the cruisers. While the fighters that attacked the station had a variety of different guns, these new fighters were all equipped with the same kind - Omicron Accelerators.

Eva paled when she realized what they were up to.

These fighters quickly flew into multiple wing formations and engaged the lifeboats one by one swiftly and efficiently. These pilots were clearly experts, and it appeared that they had performed these maneuvers many times prior.

She watched as a wing of six quickly cornered a lifeboat and shot it from every angle with their accelerators. These energy weapons didn't shred the lifeboat, but instead their blue bolts discharged onto the lifeboat's armor and coursed through its electrical systems.

Each shot drained the boat's power little by little, and thanks to the constant barrage of accelerator fire, eventually stopped the boat in its tracks.

Disabled and powerless, the lifeboat couldn't do anything but float out in space helplessly. A cruiser immediately shot one of its tractor beams at it, and pulled it into its waiting hangar.

To top it all off, the pirates who were attacking the station ended their assault and headed to support the real attack.

This fleet was never here for the station - it was here to steal them!

"Aw hell," yelled the frightened passenger. "It's a goddamned trap!"